Evolution is an indispensable component of any satisfying explanation of our psychology.
Interpretation
Evolution plays a crucial role in understanding human psychology.
In this quote, Steven Pinker emphasizes that to truly grasp the complexities of human psychology, one must consider evolution as an essential element. Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are deeply rooted in our evolutionary history, and understanding this connection is vital for a comprehensive explanation of why we think and act the way we do.
In practice
In a lecture on human behavior, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of evolutionary psychology.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.
Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe.
The problem of neurology is to understand man himself.
God is an ever receding pocket ofο»Ώ scientific ignorance.
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